Concepts and Terminology > Worksheet Fields

Overview

Worksheet Fields are placeholders to capture attributes at the Worksheet Header (e.g. Account Number, Admit Date, Practitioner) and Worksheet Criterion level (e.g. Practitioner, Event Date). PDA Professional comes with some pre-built fields and you can customize the system by adding more fields and deleting the ones you do not need. This document describes the various types of fields and their components. To create Worksheet Fields see Managing Worksheet Fields. Once defined these fields can be included in a Review Template using Managing Review Template Assignment.

Types of Fields

There are four types of worksheet fields. Once a Worksheet Field has been defined of a particular type it can be changed only to some other types as depicted in the 'Can be changed to' column in the following table.

Type	Purpose	Example	Can be changed to	Length	Comments
Numeric	Holds numerical data	Height, Age	Text	10
Text	Holds alphanumeric data	Account Number, Patient Name	Numeric, Date	1-50 user-defined
Attribution Type	Holds table values i.e. point to Attribution Type	Department, Specialty		50	Needs to be mapped to an Attribution Type, which has already been created
Date	Holds date values	Review Date, Admit Date	Text	10
Time	Holds time values	Review Time	Text	5

Text vs Attribution Type Fields: Whenever possible it is recommended that you choose Attribution Type fields over Text. By defining an Attribution Type instead of free-form Text field you save time in data entry and prevent data entry errors by selecting from a table of values rather than entering free form text. For example, different users can enter the same information differently 'Jon' and 'John' for the same person. If this was established as an Attribution Type, they would select either 'Jon', or 'John' from a pre-defined table of values. Attribution Types also allow lookups and IDs.

Text v/s Numeric Fields: Numeric fields are used to store numbers like height, weight, age. When data is stored in the numeric field leading zeros are dropped. Thus if you intended to store 0730 in numeric field it will be stored as 730 and in a text field as 0730.

Components

Managing Worksheet Fields

When managing worksheet fields, the following components are defined:

oDescription: Name of the field, each name has to be unique and can be a maximum of 50 characters long.

oShort Description: Short description is the abbreviated version of Description. It can be a maximum of 10 characters and is used in place of the long description where space is a premium.

oLength: How many characters can be entered for that field value. Length cannot be more than 50 characters.

oReview Specific: If a field is defined as review specific, it means that if the same field is used in more than one Review Template, changing the value of this field in one Review Template will NOT change it in the other and vice-versa. Note that if a field is defined as Review specific it cannot be defined as a primary key. Example of a review specific field can be 'Review Date' as it is specific to a Review Template. Example of a non-review specific field can be 'Admit Date' or 'Patient Name' as it is not specific to a Review Template and if you change it in one Review Template you would want it to change in another one too.

Review Template Assignment

When selecting fields for a Review Template, components consist of the following:

oPrimary Key: A primary key uniquely identifies a Worksheet; typically in a hospital scenario it can be an Account Number. Sometimes you may also want to define more than one field as a primary key e.g. if you are not tracking by account number you can define medical record number and admit date as the primary keys. In this example just defining the medical record number as the primary key may not be enough as if the same patient's record is reviewed for his second visit, you will not be allowed to create a new worksheet. However note that you will still be able to track information for his second visit by using repeat criterion feature in Worksheet Data Entry in the same Worksheet

oThe order for the primary fields is important. As users enter a value for a primary field and tabs out of that field, a lookup is performed on the database and existing data for that value is pulled up and user can choose one of the results. Thus if Medical Record Number and Admit Date is defined as the 1st and 2nd primary fields. As soon as the user enters the Medical Record Number and tabs out, all patients visits will be pulled up and the user can choose the relevant record. On the contrary if Admit Date is defined as the first field and Medical Record Number as second one, as soon as user enters the Admit Date and tabs out; all records for that Admit Date will be pulled up irrespective of the Patient, which can be huge list.

oIf an ADT Interface has been installed and linked to PDA Professional, Worksheet Fields can automatically be populated from the ADT feeds from your host system. Only primary fields are used to perform this lookup.

oSystem performs primary key lookup for worksheets in the following order:

First the system searches the individual Review Template to determine if there is a matching worksheet with the same values defined by the primary fields being entered. If it finds one, it will bring it up in 'Edit' mode. (At that point, if a second primary field is defined, you can change it i.e. Admit Date, and the system will be changed to 'Add' a new worksheet within that template.

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If the system does not find anything in the individual Review Template, then it searches the Global Account table to see if it can find a worksheet matching the combination of primary fields being entered. If it finds it in Global Account, it will populate the worksheet with the information already stored in Global Account. If more than one matching records are found you can choose which worksheet you would like to work with, or “x” out, or you can cancell out of dialog box by pressing escape to add a new one. If the record is chosen from an existing record in another Review Template, header fields and the Topics between the two Review Templates will be linked to each other. Thus any changes made to the not Review Specific fields in one Review Template will change the fields in another one. Similarly any changes to shared Topics and Criterion in one will affect the other.

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If it does not find anything in those areas, it will check the ADT Interface data to determine if a record exists there. If so, it will populate the data from the interface.

oSticky: Sticky fields carry forward values from one worksheet to the next one when adding new worksheets. Primary fields cannot be defined as sticky as their values would typically change from one worksheet to another.

oMandatory: Defining a field as mandatory means that you will not be able to leave it blank at the time of data entry. Primary fields are automatically marked, as mandatory or in other words primary field can never be left blank. Be judicial when defining a field as a primary key, do not define a field as primary, if you just want it not to be left blank, define it as mandatory. Typically practitioner, department will not be a primary keys, but can be a mandatory fields.

Primary, Sticky and Mandatory are defined at the Review Template level; hence a field can be mandatory in one Review Template and optional in another. Other components (Description, Short Description, Length, Review Specific) are applied at the global level and changing them will affect all Review Template.

Special Fields

Some fields have special significance and can be generated automatically.

oFacility: Each worksheet needs to have a Facility as the first field in its header. When creating worksheets it cannot be left blank as it ties in the Topic Rights. It also cannot be changed once Worksheet Data Entry has started. This field cannot be defined at the criterion level.

oUser: Once included in the worksheet header or the worksheet criterion, user field is automatically populated with the User who is performing the Worksheet Data Entry. The field is updated with the name of the User who performed the last update. See note below to decide whether to include it at the header or criterion level.

oUpdate Date: Once included in the Worksheet Header or the Worksheet Criterion, update date field is automatically populated with the date when data entry is done. The field is updated with the date when last update was done. See note below to decide whether to include it at the header or criterion level.

When included at the header level any change in the worksheet header or worksheet criterion will update this field. When included at the criterion level any update in a Criterion will update the user field for that Criterion only.

oAuto Generate: Defining a field as an Auto Generate field will automatically generate unique values. This can be very beneficial to be used as a primary key in a Review Template when no other unique field can be identified.

oLocked: Locked field controls weather a worksheet can be edited or deleted once locked. Once locked only users with 'Can Unlock Worksheets' can unlock a worksheet. This is a review-specific field, this means if a worksheet is locked in one Review Template it does not lock the worksheets in another Review Template, even if they are sharing the same primary keys. Locked worksheets will not be updated from the interface too, even if a field is marked updatable in the interface configuration. This field cannot be defined at the criterion level.

oIs Summary Worksheet: A worksheet marked as summary will allow you to do data entry in bulk. Thus if you already have done reviews outside PDA and instead of entering individual worksheets want to enter sum total only, so that reports can be run from the applicatoin, use this field. This field cannot be defined at the criterion level.